I remember how it was -- JR
Missouri School District Assigns Roommates Based on Gender Identity Rather Than Biology
A Missouri school district’s procedure on overnight trips stipulates that students will be assigned to room with others of the sex they identify with, meaning that biological males who identify as female will be assigned to sleep in the same room as girls.
Room assignments for field trips should be same-sex, with sex being “determined by how the student identifies,” Webster Groves High School Assistant Principal Dwight Kirksey said in an email, according to public documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and obtained by The Daily Signal.
Shane Williamson, director of the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion office, asked Kirksey how to handle the room assignment for a student whose “gender identity and sex assigned at birth do not match” for an overnight trip to retreat center Camp Wyman in September 2022.
Webster Groves School District, located in the suburbs of St. Louis, has taken students on trips to Camp Wyman in Eureka, Missouri, for 75 years. The retreat center provides a “DEI Word Bank” on its website with terms including “antiracist,” “intersectionality,” “unconscious bias,” “homophobia,” and “transgender.”
Camp Wyman did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
Other school districts with similar rooming policies have led to male and female students being told to sleep in the same bed. Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado assigned an 11-year-old girl to share a bed with a male student who identifies as a transgender girl while on a cross-country school trip. Her parents filed a lawsuit on Dec. 4.
When asked about the practice revealed in the emails, Webster Groves Communications Director Derek Duncan told The Daily Signal the district seeks to maximize inclusivity.
“We do not have a policy regarding situations such as that, but we have processes in place that prioritize inclusivity while respecting personal privacy,” Duncan said. “Our goal is to create a safe and supportive environment for all students.”
Webster Groves School District, which enrolls almost 4,500 students, applied its room assignment policy in February 2023 regarding a high school trip abroad.
Social studies teacher Betty Roberts said in an email that she spoke with Kirksey about the sexual identity-based policy, but she wondered how to know how students identify.
“I am looking for guidance on how to know how students identify, how to collect that information, and how to protect student privacy in the process,” she said in the email to Kirksey and Williamson.
Williamson replied with suggested wording for a Google form to determine students’ preferred sex to room with.
“I reworded the gender identity question because I do not want transgender students to feel like they will be forced to stay based on their gender identity,” Williamson said.
Questions on the revised roommate questionnaire include “Student last and first name,” “Preferred name,” and roommate requests. Williamson’s recommended form asks students to “Please share your gender identity because this information is also taken into consideration for room assignments.”
Kirksey and Williamson did not respond to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment.
Webster Groves has no board-approved policy on transgender roommate assignments, so most parents are not aware that biological males and females could be forced to share a room on an overnight field trip.
Martin Bennet, secretary and treasurer of the St. Louis County Family Association, the education advocacy nonprofit that conducted the Freedom of Information Act request, told The Daily Signal that parents should be alarmed about the district’s policies.
“Most any parent does not want their child sleeping with a child from the opposite biological sex and would recoil at the thought,” he said. “I advise parents to no longer assume that commonsense practices prevail in suburban schools since many suburban school districts have fully embraced critical theory and social justice ideologies.”
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Chicago Schools Choose Mediocrity
“It is far easier for governments to handicap the proficient than it is to better the circumstances of people who, for whatever reason, struggle through life.”
So said National Review’s Noah Rothman as he observed “the perversity of the ‘equity’ agenda and its hostility toward” American exceptionalism, in this case in the Chicago public schools.
Unlike cities such as Baltimore, which is known for its failing schools, Chicago allows gifted students to submit applications to a group of 11 selective-admission high schools intended to support academic achievement via the city’s robust school choice menu. Selective admission is part of an overall school choice program that began three decades ago and was intended to serve as a method for seventh graders who did well enough on standardized testing and their grades to enroll in a school that focused on academic achievement. Indeed, three of these selective high schools rank among the top 60 achieving schools in the country. Yet any student in the Chicago Public School system, no matter how poor and wretched their upbringing, has an opportunity to be part of these schools via a competitive process, much like the best colleges. Imagine the joy felt by a single mom — a mom who’s fighting against the temptations that gang life has for her son — when she finds out that her young man made the grade for a school that could get him out of the ‘hood.
Unfortunately for students coming up the middle school ranks, that’s been deemed unfair by Chicago’s aptly named Mayor Brandon Johnson. Despite his campaign promise to keep those schools in operation, his appointed school board — along with the teachers union whispering in its ear every step of the way — voted for a proposal to eliminate the successful gifted and talented program. Instead, students who make it to high school will be automatically enrolled in the school serving their home district in order to reverse the “stratification and inequity in CPS” that “drive(s) student enrollment away from neighborhood schools.”
“This moment,” said CPS Board President Jianan Shi, “requires a transformational plan that shifts away from a model that emphasizes school choice to one that elevates our neighborhood schools to ensure each and every student has access to a high-quality educational experience.” This despite the fact that caring parents had a tried-and-true system to advance their child and perhaps break the cycle of poverty plaguing them. Neighborhood schools have had decades to be “elevated,” but since they could not or would not do so, parents voted with their child’s enrollment: More than three-fourths of high school students in Chicago attend a high school outside their district.
Shi’s “progressive” solution — to end the pursuit of individual excellence in favor of the pursuit of mass mediocrity for the district’s 330,000 students — seems almost insidious, especially given that the district’s makeup is 90% minority. Born in Communist China, Shi seems to have brought the proletariat teachings of Karl Marx and Mao Zedong to one of our nation’s largest school districts.
While the Johnson administration desires “equity,” it’s likely this change will have the opposite effect. “It’s poor students who are academically gifted and rely on their grades, coursework, and standardized test scores to rise to the top who will be limited,” states Zachary Faria at the Washington Examiner. “Those students also happen to be racial minorities, meaning Chicago is only going to make its racial inequity worse as it drags those students down.”
This is yet another example of how elections matter. Back in May, Chicago ousted former Mayor Lori Lightfoot in a jungle primary, leaving a choice between Johnson and fellow Democrat Paul Vallas. The latter was an interesting choice as a “law and order” Democrat who was also a former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, but he lost as Johnson scored 51.4% of the vote in the runoff. There’s no guarantee that a Mayor Vallas would not have done the same thing with the selective admission schools, but having run CPS, he probably knew how well the program worked at improving the lives of those whose parent(s) cared enough to make them mind their academics.
Instead, the city will further mediocrity in the name of “equity,” and the youth — who already run a significant risk of being innocent victims in Chicago’s continuing (yet all but ignored by the national media) crossfire of gang-related youth violence — will have one more strike against them.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/102987-chicago-schools-choose-mediocrity-2023-12-19
**********************************************Australia: Schools and the politics of envy
One of the defining moments of the 2004 federal election was Mark Latham’s hit list of wealthy non-government schools and John Howard’s success in describing the ALP policy as the politics of envy. Jason Clare, the Minister for Education, is making the same mistake.
In response to a recently released report titled Improving Outcomes For All commissioned by Clare, he argues, ‘The growing gap between the rich and poor, largely as a result of segregation, based on wealth into government and non-government schools was unacceptable.’
Based on the argument that poor students are always disadvantaged, Clare also argues ‘we have one of the most segregated school systems in the OECD. Not by the colour of your skin, but by the size of your parents’ pay packet’.
Based on the assumption that school choice, where parents have the right to decide where their children are educated, is inequitable and unjust, Clare’s report offers 10 interventions calculated to level the playing field and ensure all schools, especially non-government, embrace socio-economic diversity and difference.
Reforms include legislated quotas ‘with penalties for noncompliance’, stopping non-government schools from charging fees and forcing them into the state system, stopping schools from selecting students on academic ability, and offering incentives to ‘quality educators’ to teach in disadvantaged schools.
After admitting there is no one solution to solve the issue of segregation the report argues all schools, government and non-government, must be involved to ensure all students, regardless of postcode or wealth, ‘have pathways to enrol in high-quality schooling’.
While justified in terms of equity and fairness by forcing schools to enrol students from a diverse range of home backgrounds, the report denies school choice, reduces all schools to the one level of mediocrity and state control, and stops schools charging fees and controlling who they enrol.
Since the heady days of the late 1960s, schools have been a key target in the cultural-left’s long march through the institutions. Drawing on the sociology of education movement, the argument is schools are complicit in reproducing capitalist hierarchies and concepts like meritocracy are social constructs reinforcing privilege.
Drawing on cultural-Marxism, prominent academics argue schools must be captured if the socialist dream of ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ is to be achieved.
Victoria’s Premier, Joan Kirner, argued at a Fabian meeting, schools must be ‘part of the socialist struggle for equality, participation and social change rather than in instrument of the capitalist system’.
The Australian Education Union for decades has characterised Australian society as riven with social injustice and inequality, argued Catholic and independent schools don’t deserve funding, and government schools serving low socioeconomic communities must be given priority.
The flaws in Minister Clare’s attack on so-called wealthy and privileged parents who choose non-government schools are manifest. International covenants and agreements endorse parental choice and argue parents must not be discriminated against because of where they enrol their children.
Given the Woke, extreme secularist nature of government schools and education departments pushing neo-Marxist inspired gender and sexuality theories, climate alarmism, critical race and postcolonial theories, plus identity politics, it is especially vital religious parents are free to choose.
Underlying the billions of dollars wasted as a result of the Gonski funding review, proven by international and NAPLAN tests results either flatlining or going backwards, is the myth a student’s socioeconomic background is the key determinant explaining success or failure.
While promulgating the SES myth fits the socialist belief society is structurally classist and investing more in schools serving disadvantaged communities will remedy the problem, the reality is the opposite.
Research undertaken by one of Australia’s leading education experts and psychometricians Gary Marks concludes SES accounts for 10-16 per cent when explaining outcomes. Analysis undertaken as part of the PISA test makes the same point when concluding SES contributes 15 per cent to test results.
More important factors include disciplined classrooms and setting high expectations, having a rigorous and teacher friendly curriculum, ensuring what happens in the classroom is effective and that teachers are subject experts supported by parents.
Contrary to the myth parents’ wealth is the major factor, research proves student ability and motivation are also keys to educational success. Research puts the impact of genetic inheritance at between 50 to 67 per cent and explains why working-class students are not always destined to under achieving.
Attacking Catholic and independent schools also fails the financial literacy test. On average while government school students receive $20,940 in government funding the figure for students attending non-government schools is $12,442.
Parents paying non-government school fees save state, territory, and commonwealth governments billions each and every year plus their taxes also support government schools. Proven by year 12 results, it’s also true non-government schools, with the exception of selective schools, consistently outperform government schools.
The Albanese government’s record of electorally disastrous polices include the Indigenous Voice, rocketing energy prices caused by climate alarmism, unacceptable rates of immigration and holding small businesses to account with its union-friendly industrial relations regime. Add school choice and school funding to the list.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/12/the-politics-of-envy/
******************************************************My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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